Chris Senio                                                                                                                                                  3/10/2000

The Birth of Modern Europe

Mr. Meyers

The Congress of Vienna:

The True Birth of Modern Europe

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the seeds that would later allow Europe to blossom into “Modern Europe” were finally planted. Ever since the French Revolution of 1789, France and other European powers underwent nearly constant internal struggles in which the forces of liberalism, reform, democratic ideals and change, in the broadest sense, gruesomely battled with tradition: the moneyed and landed interests of the monarch and aristocracy.  In France, where revolutionary and aristocratic forces were constantly shifting in and out of power, one man, Napoleon Bonaparte, was able to capitalize on the instability of the French government and rise to power.  By avoiding taking sides in the battle between revolutionary and reactionary and rising to power under the slogan of French Nationalism, Napoleon quickly became very powerful militarily and took advantage of the political instability and ideological dissension pandemic in Europe.  He started to feed his insatiable appetite for power by conquering the weak European nations and was quite successful for a decade, until his overzealous and reckless power-hungry nature led to his downfall.  In 1812, Napoleon lost most of his army trying to conquer Russia in an especially harsh winter, and in June 1815 Napoleon was decisively defeated at Waterloo at the hands of the Duke of Wellington and the Prussians.

After Napoleon’s defeat, the traditional holders of power, the European Monarchs, the aristocrats, the established Christian churches and the elite of military and governmental bureaucracies, returned to power and ushered in an era of conservatism.  Any radical, liberal, middle-class, or “Modern” notion quickly lost the favor of the power brokers and were acknowledged as a possible source of instability.   The tumultuous past now cast aside, European royalty was faced with the daunting task of re-organizing Europe in a manner that would ensure stability and a balance of power tilted in favor of the reactionary hands of those accustomed to holding power. 

The Congress of Vienna was dominated by the four major victors over Napoleon: Great Britain, represented by Lord Castlereagh; Prussia represented by their king, Frederick William III; Russia’s Tsar, Alexander I; and Austria’s emperor, Francis I, who  played host to all four.   However, the real voice of Austrian interests, and the most influential delegate in the entire conference was the Austrian chancellor, Prince Klemens von Metternich.  The Congress headed by Metternich had two main objectives for restructuring Europe: stability and legitimacy.

 The first, and more reactionary, was “stability.”  The Congress sought largely to achieve the same balance of power that existed in Europe before the French Revolution.  The main flaw with this thinking was that, no matter how political borders were drawn and re-drawn, Europe was not the same place it had been thirty years earlier.  All of the enlightenment thinking and “radical” action taken by France and other nations left a profound and lasting impression on European society.  Any attempts to take political power and rights from the people and transfer them back to an oligarchy would be temporary only.  Having once, tasted freedom and power for a period of time, the people would not soon forget the joys of liberty, as is evident by the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

The other guiding principle held at the Congress was “legitimacy,” the idea that when considering the redistribution of various territories, the interests of the strong and victorious nations should be favored.  This idea also proved to be a “temporary” fix.  Treating a weak nation unfairly may have no immediate consequences, but after the weak nations are allowed to rebuild, they begin to yearn for the status they once held, and they are willing to fight for it, as evident in the First and Second World Wars.

Austria happened to be one of the stronger and more influential nations that profited greatly from the Congress.  Indeed, the conservative host nation was able to capitalize most from the restructuring of Europe and impress its national values and character on the Congress in a manner that made its very nature uniquely Austrian.

For example, in exchange for the Belgian Netherlands, Austria took the two rich Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, both of which added greatly to Austria’s economic power.  Additionally, the whole point of the Congress of Vienna was to divide Napoleon’s empire and return the political status of Europe to the status quo before the revolution—to abandon the notion of Empire in favor of secular states.  However, Metternich saw to it that the Rhineland territory remained a strong confederation of 39  German states.  The Germanies consisted of 37 smaller states as well as Prussia and Austria as the Confederation’s capital.  This German Confederation proved to be an improvement over the Holy Roman Empire which Napoleon destroyed, in that the Rhineland consolidated its power from three hundred states to 39, with Austria clearly at the helm.  Austria became the single most powerful state in Central Europe because Metternich saw to it that the German Confederation was the only aspect of Napoleon’s empire allowed to remain.  Austria and Vienna were once again imperial powers basking in the glory they enjoyed hundreds of years earlier.

To ensure that Austria was able to maintain its powerful status created by the Congress, Metternich set up alliances that would serve to maintain Austrian interests.  Metternich joined the Holy Alliance, conceived by Alexander, to establish and safeguard the principles of Christianity.  Russia, Austria and Prussia served as the conservative bastions for the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant sects, respectively.  These three nations formed the nucleus of the alliance that became a symbol of reaction, repression and a means for protecting a traditional Christian way of life.

The Quadruple Alliance was set up to perpetuate the settlements of the Congress of Vienna.  This military alliance of Austria, Russia, Prussia and Great Britain, created after the Congress in November 1815, was set up to assure that the territorial boundaries created at the Congress were maintained.  However, Metternich was determined to have the Alliance serve as a means to maintain the status quo, not only politically, but socially.  Metternich intended for the Alliance to serve as an international police force to suppress any liberal grass-roots or national movements seeking to upset the delicate balance of power which tilted strongly in Austria’s favor.

However Metternich’s dream of a unified German Confederacy under Austria’s auspices soon weakened and fell apart.  Austria proper was German-speaking, but some of the older territory acquired by the Hapsburgs in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which formed a significant portion of the new German Confederacy, were inhabited by Magyar, Croat, Slovak, Ruthenian, Polish, Romanian, Serb and Italian peoples.  These people often had interests that conflicted with the Austrian ideal of the unified “German State.”  In addition, the two Italian states added in 1815 were not at all pleased at being under the rule of Austria and its “German” interests. 

To maintain cohesion and Austrian dominance over this hastily thrown together amalgam of people, Metternich was forced to enact oppressive measures to keep the people from rising against his tenuous hold on the new German Empire.  He established police and spies everywhere.  Austria became a very inward-looking nation, and permission to leave or enter the country was difficult to attain, lest dangerous or syndiclistic ideas find their way in.  Classrooms, newspapers, libraries and even concert halls were carefully watched and censored for fear that they contained subversive revolutionary messages.  Metternich was aware that times had changed since the Holy Roman Empire flourished, and his new Hapsburg State stood on shaky ground:

“The first principle to be followed by the monarchs, united as they are by the coincidence of their desires and opinions, should be that of maintaining the stability of political institutions against the disorganized excitement which has taken possession of men’s minds.”[1]

Metternich knew his alliance was one that protected his interests, those of  his fellow Austrian elite and the non-existent Holy Roman Empire which he could not abandon.  The French Revolution and the subsequent conquests of Napoleon changed Europe to such a degree that it was impossible to return to the political and social order that existed beforehand.  Too many new liberal ideas had been introduced into the European mind.  The revolutions of 1830 and 1848 proved that liberalism and democratic ideals would not soon be forgotten, while the First and Second World Wars proved that hastily thrown together political boundaries which only serve the interests of the governing elite would not survive.  The flaws in Metternich’s vision for a new Europe were consistent with the flaws of reactionary thinking, in general.  The main flaw common to all reactionary movements and share inherently is that they are, by nature, reactionary.  They represent the attitudes of a bygone era, and no matter how much temporary success they may enjoy, the success is always limited since they are rooted in the idea that the world can return to a time and place that has been passed.  This, of course, is not possible.

Bibliography

Eugen Weber, The Western Tradition (Lexington, 1990), pp. 572-576

Richard E. Sullivan et al., A Short History of Western Civilization (New York, 1992),

pp. 510-546

Donald Kaugen et al., The Western Herritage (London, 1998), pp. 699-700